Diplomatic Immunity begins with the President of a Latin American country (Rudy Solari) being admitted to a Los Angeles hospital for a critical operation amidst protests and an assassin stalking him. Despite tight security around him, his Vice President is killed and representatives from the State Department ask Quincy (Jack Klugman) to conduct the autopsy. When Quincy has difficulty getting a continuance from an unsympathetic judge in the trial he is already scheduled to testify in, he must work remotely coordinating with Sam (Robert Ito) and Dr. Asten (John S. Ragin) in the coroner lab to determine the cause of death and help prevent an assassination.
I found the first half of this episode to be pretty dull but then things picked up after that, too bad it wasn't enough to make up for the gaping plot holes. First of all, if the security was so tight in the hospital with the federal and local government hovering, how did an unauthorized person with a fake employee ID get in there and so close to the Latin president and his staff with no one realizing? They would have done background checks on every employee working on that floor in a situation like this, so that was ridiculous. I also didn't understand why the killer first took out two members of the presidential staff raising the awareness of everyone and creating further scrutiny rather than just taking out the intended target? Maybe this was a mistake, but since it is all done off screen we have no idea. All of this coupled with a local judge defying a State Department directive to postpone a trial for a couple of days on a matter of international security was just absurd and made it difficult for me to take this story seriously.
Although there is a murder featured in this episode, there is very little mystery as we know right from the beginning who is responsible. Definitely not a good Season 5 episode, especially from a quality standpoint.
